from Hacker News

Ask HN: Anyone know where Mark Pilgrim went?

by rileywatkins on 10/5/11, 1:56 AM with 84 comments

I went back to diveintohtml5.org to find something today, and it's gone. Then I checked diveintomark.org, diveintopython3.org, twitter.com/diveintomark...

Is Mark Pilgrim pulling a disappearing act?

  • by jdnier on 10/5/11, 3:36 AM

    So check this out: Google "http error code 410" and the second hit is from diveintomark.org circa 2003.

    """ Let’s all talk about HTTP error code 410. ... Error 410 means Resource gone, as in, a resource used to exist at this location, but now it’s gone. Not only is it gone, but I don’t know (or I don’t want to tell you) where it went. ... Now, there is not a lot of information about error 410... I suppose because it addresses a condition that doesn’t come up very often. Also, we’ve all been brainwashed into believing that all resources should be permanent, which simply isn’t true. """ Google cache: http://bit.ly/qxdBi5

    His servers are returning 410 errors but also the same very deliberate HTML:

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <html><head> <title>410 Gone</title> </head><body> <h1>Gone</h1> <p>The requested resource<br />/<br /> is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all references to this resource.</p> </body></html>

    Clearly Mark's invocation of the 410 error is deliberate.

  • by samuel on 10/5/11, 4:09 AM

    He's OK. I don't know how to link a tweet but see textfiles account(https://twitter.com/#!/textfiles)

    Mark Pilgrim is alive/annoyed we called the police. Please stand down and give the man privacy and space, and thanks everyone for caring. ... The communication was specifically verified, it was him, and that's that. That was the single hardest decision I've had to make this year.

  • by mbrubeck on 10/5/11, 4:36 AM

    This isn't totally unprecedented.

    In October 2004, Mark stopped blogging after a post titled "Every Exit" which read: "It’s time for me to find a new hobby. Preferably one that doesn’t involve angle brackets. Or computers. Or electricity." [1] That post sat at the top of his previously very active weblog for 18 months until he returned in April 2006. Of course, that time he only stopped posting new material; he didn't delete all his existing resources. But he did disappear from online life for a while.

    [1]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Mqb93dp...

  • by chr15 on 10/5/11, 2:28 AM

    Looks like one of his last tweets:

    Hey everybody! Adobe has acquired another batch of awesome products that they will slowly ruin through incompetence and mismanagement!

    From http://topsy.com/twitter.com/diveintomark/status/12091889959...

  • by unreal37 on 10/5/11, 4:11 AM

    Apparently it has been verified he is alive.

    http://twitter.com/#!/textfiles/status/121436177298493440

    @textfiles (Jason Scott) Mark Pilgrim is alive/annoyed we called the police. Please stand down and give the man privacy and space, and thanks everyone for caring.

    @textfiles (Jason Scott) The communication was specifically verified, it was him, and that's that. That was the single hardest decision I've had to make this year.

  • by dangoor on 10/5/11, 2:12 AM

  • by kenneth_reitz on 10/5/11, 4:46 AM

  • by rdhyee on 10/5/11, 2:21 AM

    I'd definitely like to know what happened to Mark Pilgrim and hope he is well. It's still reassuring to know that his websites are still archived by the Internet Archive. (e.g., http://web.archive.org/web/20110726001953/http://diveintohtm...)

  • by Bo102010 on 10/5/11, 2:30 AM

    His github account is gone as well (http://github.com/diveintomark).

    This is troubling. I'm glad I downloaded Dive Into Python 3, at least.

  • by andyfleming on 10/5/11, 4:03 AM

    "Stand down Mark Pilgrim alert. Google, his employer, is on it. Thank you all. Hoping for “he’s just pissed off at Internet” as outcome."

    Source: http://twitter.com/#!/GlennF/status/121434638282530816

  • by solutionyogi on 10/5/11, 2:45 AM

    That's a really sad news.

    He hasn't deleted his Hacker News Account yet. He last commented 27 days ago.

    http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=MarkPilgrim

    [I loved his blog and I wish someone has archive for it. I did not archive it locally because Mark used to write articles about long term archival of his data and I didn't think he would ever delete all his public writings.]

  • by robbiet480 on 10/5/11, 3:45 AM

    Jason Scott of textfiles.org has called his local police department for a welfare check...

    https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/121430050930298880

  • by wooswiff on 10/5/11, 3:33 AM

    As pointed out by user mikelietz on Eric Meyer's site, http://firehose.diveintomark.org/ is still up.

  • by adriand on 10/5/11, 3:12 AM

    I really hope Mark is okay, and I'm really going to miss Dive Into HTML5. That resource had a truly unique writing style, featured a great design, and was an a absolute treasure trove of valuable information. I was literally on the site just yesterday, reading up on local storage.

  • by andyfleming on 10/5/11, 4:09 AM

    "Mark Pilgrim is alive/annoyed we called the police. Please stand down and give the man privacy and space, and thanks everyone for caring."

    Source: http://twitter.com/#!/textfiles/status/121436177298493440

  • by WALoeIII on 10/5/11, 2:30 AM

    _why 2.0.

  • by esigler on 10/5/11, 3:35 AM

    Similar (though not as extreme) behavior has occurred in the past:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20110726001259/http://diveintomar...

  • by itsnotvalid on 10/5/11, 4:42 AM

  • by pingswept on 10/5/11, 3:39 AM

    There's a precedent for this. He disappeared from his blog for a while in 2004. Check the Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:diveint...

  • by kyleslattery on 10/5/11, 2:21 AM

    http://diveintohtml5.com/ seems to still be working

  • by artursapek on 10/5/11, 3:52 AM

    Holy shit, I was just using "Dive Into HTML5" at a hackathon this weekend. It helped a ton, I loved the way that site was designed. This is eery.

  • by nostromo on 10/5/11, 2:44 AM

    > Is Mark Pilgrim pulling a disappearing act?

    Shouldn't we respect his wishes? If he wants to pull the plug on his online identity, he should be allowed to do so without HN sending out an internet search squad.

  • by tuna on 10/5/11, 12:17 PM

    10/4 - never forget. the gayest day on the interwebs. everyone acting like old ladies towards a grown man. [eagle_cries]

  • by sudonim on 10/5/11, 3:29 AM

    Maybe he and _why are in Galt's Gulch? (Any Atlas Shrugged fans?)

  • by shareme on 10/5/11, 2:50 AM

    Respect his wishes, even his google accounts/profiles gone..

    As far as I know he is still working at Google

  • by alnayyir on 10/5/11, 2:52 AM

    He's making recompense for making JDBC part of the first exercise in a Python book.

    He'll return from the self-flagellation in two years after some time spent at a monastery.

    I fully expect his enlightenment will bring much into the world of programming.